Bluebird
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out. A reflective little one-shot about all of our friends from Gundam Wing after the war ends. Based on the Charles Bukowski poem.


Originally intended to be a series of drabbles based on the Charles Bukowski poem, _Bluebird_, for a comm, but didn't turn out that way. Just a little reflective one shot.

* * *

**Bluebird**

Heero Yuy watches the sea and thinks about drowning. He travels to Earth often on the shuttles, anonymous, watching the stars and the darkness and the empty space.

_there's a bluebird in my heart that_  
_wants to get out_  
_but I'm too tough for him_

Trowa Barton watches the sky as it changes, and thinks about amnesia. He travels nowhere and has dreams about flying.

The other circus performers tell him they too have flying dreams, the types of dreams that one aspires to live, that one thinks aren't real.

Trowa, after the war, tells everyone that flying dreams are the worst kind.

_I say, stay in there, I'm not going_  
_to let anybody see_  
_you_

Wufei Chang watches Mariemaia as she changes and thinks about loss, thinks about growing old, about death in a form that isn't beautiful, but merely inevitable.

He thinks about graves and soldiers weighted with medals earned by a long life, heavy in the ground with age and time. He thinks how much more difficult it is now, to know that he won't die, to live with honor.

Mariemaia smiles at him in ways that no teenage girl ever should. He finds Treize in his dreams and in his nightmares, and he apologizes.

_there's a bluebird in my heart that_  
_wants to get out_  
_but I pour whiskey on him and inhale_  
_cigarette smoke_

Mr. Winner was never any stranger to liquor or women; and so Quatre Winner inherits a legacy that goes beyond a man that had to have over 20 daughters to bear one son.

Quatre is Mr. Winner too, and he hangs over the open bars with just enough charisma to convince the nonbelievers that he is the heir apparent, that he is a new man.

Mr. Winner, senior and junior, is no stranger to liquor. He sees things and hears people say things before they speak; when he attends functions, he toasts himself many times over to obscure the voices.

And in bed, where nothing matters, he calls everyone Trowa.

_and the whores and the bartenders_  
_and the grocery clerks_  
_never know that_  
_he's_  
_in there_

Duo Maxwell watches as his own face changes from soft to hard. Shapes are such a commodity now, always searching for just the right one that will fit into the missing machine part.

He fits nowhere. In all of the colonies he's traveled to, he's never once been able to fit his face into a mirror without breaking it.

He does it quietly, the way he used to steal bread; unassuming and innocent, an accident or a genuine need. But now, when he gets to a new destination, his reflection stares back at him with large eyes that say nothing.

_there's a bluebird in my heart that_  
_wants to get out_  
_but I'm too tough for him,_  
_I say,_  
_stay down, do you want to mess_  
_me up?_

Relena has cared for Dorothy Catalonia since the war.

She complains about the birds on Earth, about the Sanq Kingdom. She says, "_So many songbirds, Miss Relena. How absolutely dreadful and idealistic_."

The child in Relena wishes she could say that she put them there, that she gave the Earth its song, that she can take or give what Dorothy wants.

Relena Darlian Peacecraft, says, "Miss Catalonia, do come down for breakfast. It would please me so."

Dorothy weeps over scrambled eggs and simply smiles through it all, looking at Relena, resenting her, and tells her she would prefer a burial in space.

Relena never asks why she cries. She simply says, "Dorothy, please, eat your breakfast."

Dorothy still jerks in the night, clutching her side and her head, weeping in her sleep. And Relena is there, a hand on her forehead, wondering if the fever has gotten to her in the grand finale of madness; wondering if the Zero System has finally made its last hurrah.

But it never does. Instead, she always climbs out of bed, puts on her bathrobe and braids Dorothy's hair when she calms, singing a quiet song about songbirds and meadows. Ridiculous, trivial, childish things.

Dorothy never touches her afterward, doesn't even remember; but when she wakes up with her hair braided, with songbirds outside, with a cup of tea at the bedside, she resents the fact that she can't weep.

She resents the fact that Miss Relena never stays.

She never knows why her hair is braided.

She never wants to.

She longs for rapiers.

_and we sleep together like_  
_that_  
_with our_  
_secret pact_  
_and it's nice enough to_  
_make a man_  
_weep, but I don't_  
_weep, do_  
_you?_


End file.
